Adwords Trouble Ahead for MCA Industry?

December 6, 2012 | By: Sean Murray

The MCA industry is complicated. Tons of funders purchase future receivables, some do traditional loans, and others operate in a gray area in between. But what will Google make of it? The rules are changing and we predict a lot of funders are going to face a massive challenge in advertising with Google Adwords. See the e-mail that went out:

Dear AdWords Advertiser,

We’re writing to let you know about a change to Google’s advertising policies that might affect your AdWords account.

Beginning in the coming weeks, we will require all short-term loans advertisers to display the following prominently on the landing page:

1. Display the APR. Aggregators/lead generators may provide a representative APR range for their network.

2. Display the implications of non-payment, including the following:

– Financial implications (fees and interest)
– Collection practices
– Potential impact to users’ credit score
– Renewal policy information, including if the renewal is automatic and if there are fees associated with the renewal
– Aggregators/lead generators may provide sample implications from their network to satisfy the above requirements. Implications of non-payment should be grouped together in one location on the landing page.

The above must be displayed prominently, meaning the same font type, size, and color as the base text on the landing page. These guidelines apply to lenders, aggregators, and lead generators alike.

In addition, we are updating our policy on consumer advisories. Going forward, payday loan ads (a subset of short-term loans) will only be shown on Display Network sites that are related to payday loans. Ad serving in the Search Network will not change.

When we make this change, Google will suspend all campaigns identified as being in violation of our revised policy. Our system identified your account as potentially affected by this policy change. We ask that you make any necessary changes to your ads and sites to comply, so that your campaigns can continue to run.

We’ve given much consideration to our stance on the advertising of this content and the potential effect our policy decision could have on AdWords advertisers. However, as a business, Google must make decisions regarding the advertising that we accept. As noted in our advertising Terms and Conditions, Google may refuse any ads or terminate ad campaigns at any time, for any reason. You can view our Terms and Conditions at https://adwords.google.com/select/tsandcsfinder.

Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team